When a telephone call, Internet usage or other telecommunication is made, it is converted into a format, such as a laser or signal, that can be transferred across a fiber network. The signal is combined with other signals into a channel to make a composite signal. For example, a Sonet OC192 signal can have up to one hundred and thirty thousand calls per channel.
As can be seen in FIG. 1, each fiber on the fiber network carries a number of channels 100. With reference to FIG. 2, if a composite signal is to be sent a distance, the channel enters a terminal node 206 and is sent along the fiber network 200 to another terminal node 212. As the signal passes across the fiber network it passes through other nodes, such as 208 and 210, to facilitate the transfer of the composite signal. For instance, the nodes can optically amplify the signal as it is transferred.
With reference to FIG. 2, a fiber network is shown. Channels 202 feed into the terminal nodes A and D, 206 and 212 respectively. The signals are transferred via the fiber network 200 and through nodes B and C, 208 and 210. If the equipment in the network is not provisioned correctly or monitored on a regular basis, there may be quality and performance degradation of the telecommunications signal, dropped calls and calls unable to be connected. To prevent these kinds of problems, changes often need to be made to the equipment, such as the nodes and terminal nodes, so that they operate within set standards. Furthermore, relationships between the equipment also need to be monitored. When monitoring and making changes to the equipment in a fiber network is done manually it is time consuming and costly. The completion of necessary changes to alarms and thresholds settings in the equipment manually can take years. Also, monitoring information such as span loss between equipment, total amplification and appropriate output power based on channel count currently is not done in the ALCATEL 1640 DWDM equipment in a telecommunications fiber network. As such, a method and system to monitor equipment and make changes to equipment in a telecommunications fiber network would be beneficial.